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Leadership has been recognised as a critical factor for employees' job satisfaction. However, much remains to be learned about how university academics who work in developing country contexts perceive their head of departments (HoDs) and deans' leadership styles and how such leadership styles influence their job satisfaction. Therefore, extending earlier research on higher education leadership, this study was pioneered to examine deans' and heads of departments' leadership styles and how such leadership styles influenced their job satisfaction.

This study employed an exploratory research design to draw on data from in-depth interviews with university academics sourced from two private and two public universities. Participants constituted fifteen academics (N = 15) from the studied universities. The collected data from interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to thematic analysis.

The findings revealed that overall, academics perceived their HoDs and deans as employing both transformational and transactional leadership styles. As such, both styles of leadership influenced academics' job satisfaction in diverse ways although the transformational leadership style appeared to be the most dominant in influencing academics' job satisfaction.

The article highlights the need for university managers (i.e. heads of departments and deans) to flexibly employ preferred leadership styles to achieve job satisfaction among academics.

From the theoretical point of view, this article contributes to expanding the earlier research by showing how academics' perceptions of leadership styles employed by their academic leaders shape their job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effect of management and decision‐making styles on the job satisfaction of academic staff in a Malaysian Research University.

The sample consisted of 218 respondents. The instruments used in the study were the Teacher Job Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Decision Style Inventory. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to determine the influence of decision‐making style and management style on the job satisfaction.

The findings showed that the research university had adopted an analytical decision‐making style. The hygiene factors were the predictors of job satisfaction as perceived by the academic staff at the research university in Malaysia.

This research selected a top Malaysian research university and small samples were selected from the whole population under consideration, thus, the findings can be generalized as similar to other research universities. In addition, the university management determines the decision‐making style, and the job satisfaction of the academic staff is affected by the decision‐making style of the university.

A contribution is made to the literature as the research reinforces the view that the management style and decision‐making style can predict or affect the job satisfaction of the academic staff.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress and the propensity to remain) of Australian academics and their association with organisational, institutional and demographic factors.

Data were collected by distributing a survey questionnaire to 750 academics, from 37 Australian universities.

The results indicate a moderately low level of job satisfaction, moderately high level of job stress, and high propensity to remain. The findings reveal that the organisational factors (management style, perceived organisational support, and the characteristics of the performance management system) exhibited the most significant association with academic work‐related attitudes, with the only significant institutional factor, the declining ability of students, negatively impacting on job satisfaction and job stress. The findings revealed that work‐related attitudes differ, based on discipline, with science academics found to be more stressed and less satisfied than accounting academics. Different organisational and institutional factors were associated with the work‐related attitudes of academics from these two disciplines.

The findings will make university management aware of the work‐related attitudes of staff, and the factors that are associated with such attitudes, thereby assisting management in developing management policies, and taking appropriate action to address the concerns of staff.

The study provides an initial comparison of the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress, and propensity to remain) of Australian academics across the accounting and science disciplines. The study also provides an important insight into the association between specific organisational and institutional factors, with the work‐related attitudes of Australian academics across both disciplines.

A number of research findings have suggested that managers are, in general, more satisfied with their jobs than are workers. This study aims to investigate the job satisfaction of academics and their managers, and to find out whether academics who hold managerial positions are, on the whole, more satisfied with their jobs than academics who do not hold similar administrative posts. The study found that university teachers are fairly satisfied with their jobs, although there are aspects of their jobs from which they derive some dissatisfaction. Using a statistical test of differences, it was found that academics and their managers differ significantly on the levels of satisfaction which they derive from most aspects of their jobs. Sources of these differences are identified, and the general conclusion is that management position, characterised by seniority in age, rank, and length of service, affects university teachers’ level of job satisfaction positively.

Higher education institutions have undergone a transformation over the past few decades, from loosely coupled systems to more centrally managed organizations. Central to this ongoing development is the increasing competition for resources and reputation, driving higher education institutions to rationalize their structures and practices. In our study, we focused on changes in job advertisements for professorships in Germany from 1990 to 2010. Findings showed that the requirements stipulated by universities for professorial positions have become increasingly differentiated (and measurable) over time. In this context, competitive aspects, such as third-party funding, international orientation, or publications, have particularly come to the fore and grown significantly in importance. We discuss these findings in light of an increasing managerialization of higher education institutions, which has a direct effect on collegiality. We argue that the differentiation of professorial job profiles leads to even more formalized appointment processes and may push collegial governance into the background.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of servant leadership on work engagement and affective commitment among academics in higher education. Moreover, the paper highlights the role of job satisfaction as an intervening mechanism among the examined variables.

Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to academics working in the Palestinian higher education sector. We used structural equation modelling to examine the hypotheses.

A positive relationship was found between servant leadership and affective commitment. The relationship between servant leadership and work engagement is fully mediated by job satisfaction, whereas partial mediation was found between servant leadership and affective commitment. Both work engagement and affective commitment have a positive impact on academics’ job performance.

The paper provides a fertile ground for higher education managers concerning the role of leadership in stimulating work engagement and organisational commitment among academics.

First, the paper is one of the few studies that empirically examines servant leadership in higher education using data coming from a non-Western context because most of the servant leadership research is conducted in the Western part of the world (Parris and Peachey, 2013). Second, we empirically provide evidence for the argument that servant leadership is needed in higher education. Third, the paper contributes to the limited body of research on work engagement and commitment in the higher education sector.

This study aims to highlight the differences between the public and foundation universities determining the level of job satisfaction of academic personnel working at vocational schools within the body of public and foundation universities in Turkey.

In the present study, the questionnaire developed by Ardic and Bas and used in a similar study is taken as the basis for this study. Some amendments have been made to the instrument. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated using the Cronbach alpha coefficient and some statistical methods such as independent samples t test and chi-square test depending on the data. Differences of opinion based on demographic characteristics are presented giving the frequencies and percentages of demographic characteristics of the data.

Three questions were focused on in the present study: the first is to present the most important factor affecting the job satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the academic personnel working at the public and foundation universities; the second is to determine whether there is a difference between public and foundation universities and the third is to set forth the reasons of these differences, if any.

The current study selected 12,160 academic personnel throughout Turkey and the questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. The instrument could not be delivered to all the personnel. This is because it was not possible to have access to the e-mail addresses of some of the academic personnel, some of the e-mail addresses were not in use or out of date while some personnel do not use the internet.

The aim of this study is to determine job satisfaction level of academic personnel working in vocational high schools operating under the umbrella of state and foundation universities, which offer educational services in Turkey. Since no study is encountered as a result of the literature survey made, that addressed especially the level of the job satisfaction of the academic staff working in the vocational schools in Turkey in a way to cover all public and foundation universities, such a study was made for the purpose of removing the deficiency in this subject.

This paper aims to study students' strategic behaviors for increasing their job prospect in response to university administrators' moves for lifting up institutional reputation in the academia.

A Stackelberg differential game is used to study this strategic interplay between administrators and students. In this game, an administrator maximizes institutional quality to build university reputation while student maximizes grades to increase their job prospects. Therefore, administrators being the leader move first while students set strategies for maximizing their objective function by following administrators' move.

The study produces several distinctive results by analyzing administrator–students’ strategic interactions. First, university administrators need to be sufficiently more impatient for building reputation by improving institutional quality than students’ impatience for increasing their job prospects to have feasible solutions. Second, students attempt to increase academic grades for making them more marketable in response to administrators’ additional efforts for increasing their students’ job prospects. Third, exogenous increase in university reputation improves institutional quality and students’ job prospects without affecting their academic grades. However, increase in job prospects motivates students to increase their grades. Fourth, administrators’ too much impatience for increasing university reputation could inflate students’ grade, reduce job prospect and degrade institutional quality. Fifth, an exogenous rise in students’ impatience improves institutional quality and students’ job prospects but reduces students’ grades. Finally, the exogenous increase in opportunity cost of securing good grade degrades institutional quality, thus reducing further job prospects. Therefore, administrators’ positive but moderate impatience for reputation will improve students’ academic performances, institutional quality and job prospects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze students’ strategic responses for improving their job prospects in response to administrators’ actions for enhancing university reputation. It helps administrators to design an effective framework for building university reputation in the academic market through improving institutional quality and expanding job markets for their students.

The purpose of the article is to examine the motivation of the academics in a developing country, Cambodia, which is an under-researched country in order to look into the satisfaction level of the academics in various aspects of academic profession. This study helps inform policy makers and other stakeholders in higher education in Cambodia about the current status quo of academic profession in Cambodia, which acts to impede the quality of higher education in this country.

This study employed a survey design to examine the motivation of academics in a periphery country, Cambodia. The result from an online survey via Microsoft Form of 278 academics currently working at three public universities and four private universities across the country revealed that academics in higher education institutions in Cambodia were satisfied with their job (Mean = 4.1, SD = 0.74) and the organizational culture and value (Mean = 3.9, SD = 0.77), but dissatisfied with their salary (Mean = 3.1, SD = 0.90). The mean score of other variables also skewed toward happiness, yet this mean score remained low (between 3.2 and 3.8). Furthermore, the result from t-test and one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference in job satisfaction between public and private academics and among academics from different employment statuses. Job satisfaction of academics in this study did not come from salary or work environment, but may have come from the flexibility and status quo of academic career in Cambodia, in which the majority of academics have additional job while many others (38% of the participants) treat teaching as their secondary job and at the same time maintain the title as academic or even professor, which is relatively well-respected in Cambodia society, despite poor salary. The complexity of academic career in this context may present major setbacks to the quality of higher education in this periphery country.

This study revealed that although academics in higher education in Cambodia were satisfied with their job and organizational culture and value, they were not satisfied with their work environment and salary. The result from this study indicated that the reason why salary did not determine the satisfaction level of academics was that most of the academics in Cambodia higher education have additional job or business in addition to teaching. Moreover, they have other full-time jobs outside higher education and they can still teach part-time to earn extra income.

Since this study generated only 278 responses from academics, these data remain small compared to the whole population. Thus, this may affect the generalization of the finding to the larger population.

This study helps fill the existing gaps in literature on higher education in Cambodia and the findings from this study can be used to make informed decision regarding quality of higher education in Cambodia.

Higher education is a social institution that helps maintain professionalization of all professions and improve students competitiveness. Improving quality of higher education means that academics themselves need to be professional and ethical toward teaching. This research pointed out the unethical practices of academic procession, which in turn, de-professionalize academics and downgrade the quality of higher education in Cambodia.

This study provides a fresh insights into the motivation of academics in Cambodia higher education. This study also provides the framework for academic motivation in a developing country.

This paper aims to identify the role of organizational and individual factors in predicting the research performance of academics when job crafting is a mediator variable and organizational culture is a moderating variable.

This study was conducted by collecting responses from academics at five Malaysian research-based universities. The sample size was 273. Standard questionnaires were used to collect the data. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The most significant predictors of research performance were organizational culture, individual effort and professional development, whereby job crafting was most optimally predicted by work engagement and transformational leadership. While organizational culture moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and research performance, the mediating role of job crafting was insignificant between work engagement and research performance.

The findings have important implications for human resource development practitioners (HRD) in terms of improving overall academic research performance. Practical interventions are suggested to assist academics in enhancing their performance. This study highlights how academic performance can be managed more effectively.

The findings extend the HRD literature in higher education and offer a framework that enhances the understanding of the organizational and individual factors that influence academics' research performance within a specific context of research universities in a non-Western context.